Old Peculier completes Dundalk hat-trick

Progressive Old Peculier (10/11f) completed a hat-trick of recent Dundalk wins today, defying a 7lb mandatory penalty in winning the Book Online At DundalkStadium.com Apprentice Handicap.

The Aclaim-gelding shed his maiden tag on his 12th career attempt in December before following up last Friday and today scored very easily by 4.5 lengths from Ha Long Bay

It was a fourth career success for 16-year-old jockey Keithen Kennedy, from Monasterevin and apprenticed to Jessica Harrington.

After the race, winning trainer Mark Fahey reported “he did it well again, likes this place and Keithen gave him a great ride. He has got all the luck up here and has got a clear run and everything like that.

"He's living way above our expectations. I think the biggest thing to him is the blinkers - they have worked and how long more that's going to continue, I don't know. They are bringing out huge improvement and they won't be coming off him.

"It is hard to know what to do with him - he is a bit of a monkey and if we give him a break he might not come back to where he was before. We were planning to go jumping hurdles so might put that on hold for another little bit. We'll sit down and have a look, and we'll see what comes up.

"He probably deserves a crack at a decent handicap, so we might just go down that route.”

Quotes from Michael Graham